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Oliver had always liked that story. About heroes. About heroes together. Companions. He did not personally want to face a war, but something in him stirred at the idea of loyalty, of friendship, of that bond. He liked the idea of that.
Tir had said once that his people told that story, too. He’d paused after he’d said so; they’d been thirteen and fifteen years old respectively, doing some reading for their history tutor, sitting in one of the window-seats in the palace’s private library. Ollie had said, “Is your version different?” and Tir had laughed, finger in the book to mark his place, gaze going out past rain to the closest visible statue. “Of course it is. Or not entirely. In some ways.”
Oliver had said, “Not helpful, you know,” and Tir had laughed more and deflected with, “We’re supposed to be looking up actual historical fact, not legend; help me find out more about the reasons for that baron’s defection,” and Ollie had given in and gone back to research.
It was still a good question. No one knew that much about fairies. Not even the historians. Not even as close as their home lay to the border.
The Kingdom of Bellemare nestled right at the edge of the Northern Wild; beyond the vaguely understood line hovered the fairy realms and magic and perilous enchantment. Occasionally periwinkle-furred foxes or small swooping firebirds flitted into Bellemare’s tall grass and forests; most crops grew permanently full and lush, the land tended to be happily fertile, and their trade with more southern realms reflected both the wealth and the indefinable glinting ethereal edge to homespun lace and shawls and sugar-berries. They weren’t a large kingdom—Oliver knew most of the attendees at today’s gathering by name, at least in passing—but most people lived fairly well.
That prosperity was a gift of sharing borders with magic. Or a complication.
In general Bellemare’s people regarded magic with a sort of grimly resigned humor: power might level mountains, which could be good or bad. Everyone knew those tales. Some of them were true.
Even these days, most villages had at least one wise man or a woman who could suggest where to best dig that new well or a smith with a surprisingly delicate hand. Stories of warriors with uncanny grace, or trackers who could follow the wind, or someone’s great-great-aunt once-removed being able to make roses bloom midwinter, grew as common as grass but less believable. Most people’d never seen a proper fairy, though.
Or they hadn’t. Until Tirian.
Everyone in Bellemare knew Tir was a fairy. They’d known since he’d arrived. He’d said as much, though he’d also said he couldn’t say much more.
Oliver shifted his feet in too-tight shoes, a gesture hopefully unnoticed. His mother and Tir would never show any hint of discomfort, even if they felt any.
His mother had moved on to a discussion of irrigation and canals. Cedric, on her other side, seemed to be trying to flirt with half the crowd. The crowd did not mind, and adored their youngest prince with vast adoration, often physical. Cedric hopped in and out of beds without discrimination and with good humor, and knew perfectly well that he would be too impatient and easily distracted to make a good king; he’d said as much, laughing, content with a spot on the Small Council and the ability to read the gossiping pulse of the kingdom. When they’d been growing up Ollie’d vaguely liked and mostly tolerated his youngest sibling with the distant fondness of the eight years between them; he’d been somewhat surprised to discover that they were friends these days.
This accounted for three-fifths of the royal horde, including Tir. Neither of Oliver’s sisters was present, off having their own lives, probably not with unfortunate footwear. Eleanora Margretta, happily married to the second son of the King and Queen of Stratsburg-to-the-East, was making herself generally indispensable and beloved in terms of civic improvements and enlargement of grammar-schools and ladies’ rights; Em was a year younger than Oliver, and he missed her, but she wouldn’t bother to come back for a simple seasonal address. Both Em and Lou—Louisa Georgiana, who’d cheerfully rejected the idea of any court betrothal whatsoever and was studying at the great physician-school in Al-Masi, far down South—would be back for Midwinter, anyway, he thought, and this thought cheered him up until he remembered that he was still standing on a dais in front of the castle with hundreds of eyes evaluating his fitness to be Crown Prince.
They were friendly eyes, though. He really did know most of them. Bellemare had never been an expansive kingdom, and the people tended to stay and not leave, proud of their home, mildly anxious about northern winds, used to the occasional pink moon or hail that turned out to be pearls. The entire land was small enough to ride across in a week, and they hadn’t had any real conflict since the Civil War, and did not maintain any standing militia except the amiable Home Guard.
That wasn’t much of a problem. Nobody particularly wanted to invade a country that shared uneasy borders with Fairyland. One or two of the older histories made cryptic mention of stones devouring enemy armies in the night.
Tir, despite being a wild Northern fairy, probably wouldn’t devour anyone. Or enchant rocks to devour anyone. Most likely not, anyway.
The address was winding down. The sun had heated the coronet atop Oliver’s head; he wanted to shove it off. He wanted shade, and a lack of expectations on his shoulders, and some casual corner of a tavern with a mug of ale and his sketchbook and Tir alternately reading a new novel and making jokes about Ollie’s boots getting in the way.
Those were jokes, because Tir always neatly stepped over or out of the way of Ollie’s limbs. This morning, dressed up in blue silk and clinging trousers, dark hair pulled back, he’d looked flawless. Ollie had somehow got honey on his own sleeve, at breakfast, and had had to change.
He wriggled his toes surreptitiously. His shoes did not give way.
Everyone did know Tir was a fairy, but for a fairy he didn’t do anything astonishing. Finding a lost kitten or two, a gift for languages, mysteriously always in the kitchen when blueberry pie appeared. The most magic he’d done had been healing Cedric’s broken arm, at the age of fourteen; it’d been a bad break, while they’d been out on a ride, and a sudden storm had descended with thunder.
They’d been far from any assistance, too far, no good options. Oliver had tried not to panic, seeing blood and bone, frantically fumbling for a solution. Tir had glanced at him, and then had dropped to both knees amid rain and mud, at the youngest prince’s side. Had put both hands into the blood and fracture, had shut his eyes, and had murmured words in a language Oliver didn’t know. The bone had knit; the flesh had closed.
Cedric, half-conscious through pain, and Oliver, shocked, had both been wordless. Tir had sat back, shoved wet hair out of his eyes, and said, “Ow.”
He hadn’t been bleeding, but he held his own arm as if it hurt, though after a second he’d said he was fine, and got up. The rain had cleansed the drops of Cedric’s blood from his hands, falling into puddles.
After a moment or two, aside from the red on Cedric’s shirt, no one would’ve known anything had happened at all. Entirely normal.
Tir had been quieter that evening, subdued, looking at Ollie and then glancing away. A nameless emotion had twisted in Oliver’s chest; he’d come over, after supper, and said, “Hey, you okay?” and Tir had looked surprised. Oliver had said, “Come on, astronomy tower and ginger beer, there’s supposed to be some sort of shooting-star shower tonight?” and that’d been normal too, because he wanted Tir to know that: to know that magic or not, they were friends and Oliver would never be afraid of him.
That’d been the most impressive feat so far. Tir might’ve been thoroughly human, except for the slim tall otherworldly grace and occasional weather-sense. He got lost in books and did not know how to do laundry and left hair-ties in the library and Oliver’s room and wherever else he’d been that day. He was as familiar as the stones in the palace walls, and as reliably present. As he was now.
And perhaps it was a good omen, gossip had suggested, to have a fairy around. Good luck. Assistance for whatever Oliver, the heir, might need. A blessing, even if he was practically hardly a fairy at all; and the baker, laughing, had thrown a berry-filled pie out to Tir from the window as she’d said it. He’d caught it adroitly and grinned.
Whatever Tir was or wasn’t, he was Oliver’s best friend. That was true. That had been true for fifteen years.
In the present, under autumn sun, Oliver’s mother finished the last proclamations regarding the state of the land and the opening of the Historical Society Museum, and announced, “All right, now we’re having the party,” and invited all assembled subjects, brewers and barons and gardeners and marchionesses, to the feast spread out on the palace’s Great Lawn.
Ollie exhaled. And tugged the coronet off his head.
